Former IBM director David Kelly is set to join the executive team at fast growing artificial intelligence firm ProFinda.

Kelly’s appointment as chief strategy officer is intended to help further its work in helping organisations internally match people with the right skills to the right projects.

He has worked in the SaaS applications market for 15 years, with the last five of those at IBM after they acquired talent management technology company Kenexa in 2012.

He became vice president of the European division of Kenexa and later a director and executive at IBM.

Kelly has led on a number of strategic HR initiatives for IBM in Europe, with a strong focus on refining talent management solutions, the go-to-market for people analytics in Europe and embedding Watson into employee feedback.

“I’m delighted to be joining the team at ProFinda during this exciting, pivotal point in its growth and development,” said Kelly.

“The simple fact is that many organisations still fail with the core task of matching the best employees with the right skills to the right projects, bids or tasks that require them - meeting the modern day challenge of building and managing a ‘liquid workforce’.

“ProFinda has developed an innovative and AI-driven technology to achieve this and can now offer clients a single accurate view of their total workforce, across all talent pools.

“I look forward to driving its product proposition and strategy onwards in 2018.”

London-based ProFinda’s AI-powered technology builds a dynamic map of all the skills, knowledge, connections and expertise available across a company.

Machine learning helps to match the right people with the right expertise to others who require their assistance.

ProFinda gives firms an accurate birds-eye view of all the knowledge contained across their entire talent pool - including employees, alumni, freelancers and other contractors.

Roger Gorman, CEO at ProFinda, said: “David is joining ProFinda at such an exciting time for the company.

“He holds an equally disruptive view to the future of the workforce and I look forward to working with David to further develop our strategic partnerships, which currently include the six top professional services firms and Thomson Reuters Elite, and to help position ProFinda as the go-to for all organisations looking to increase internal productivity and utilise their workforce talent more effectively.”

Another former IBM employee will join the company, Rebecca Foreman Wood, as implementation lead.